RE: Rép. : RE: does anybody reads the cover letters before applying them?

From: Bruce Vining

One example -- many, many years ago (when I was an IBM SE) I was
called into an account that had installed a COBOL PTF and suddenly
their business applications were failing whenever they were
re-compiled. The reason was that they had inadvertently been coding
to bug in the COBOL compiler (one that was related to database
access). The PTF they applied fixed the bug and all of a sudden
their database access was no longer working as desired. Over the
years I have seen many other similar instances -- a developer
discovers how something "works" and codes to it, without ever looking
to see if it's supposed to work that way.

So if we make the assumption that most PTFs correct bugs and the
known fact that bugs are sometimes written to (used) inadvertently,
then every PTF coverletter would need to indicate that business
applications are at risk of being impacted. Which would quickly
cause everyone to ignore the warning anyway :)

Another example of this is the telnet exit point program certificate offset. On 25 April 2005, Bruce posted a message in a reply to my thread that adding 2 to the offset was an error and would be corrected at some point. When I installed V5R4, I checked the program and found that it no longer worked as it had on V5R3. Simple to take care of if you remember 3.5+ years later that you have to check it. :)
--
Sean Porterfield

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